Clarity Over Brevity!

A podcast for English learners!  Improve your listening skills, practice your pronunciation, learn new vocabulary!     

This episode, I'm chatting with Eric from @compellingtalks and @ChimayoPress!  We chatted about American accents, tips for students of different disciplines preparing for Questions and Answers (or “Q & A”s) and long writing projects in English, and how being clear is often more important than being brief...

Pronunciation tip = How and why we use "Question Tags"!


Presenter = Sam @_emaileng (Twitter, IG), @emaileng (TikTok)     

Guest = Eric Roth  @compellingtalks  & @ChimayoPress (Twitter)

Music = "Baby Bloodheart" by Mara Carlyle   @MaraCarlyle (Twitter)    www.maracarlyle.bandcamp.com       

Artwork = Penny Rossano  @pennyrossanomusicart (IG)     www.pennyrossanoillustrations.com 

Transcript

EPISODE 28:  CLARITY, NOT BREVITY

Hello!  And welcome to Chat ENG – a podcast where people chat about how they learn and use English.  My name is Sam, I’m a CELTA teacher and a performer, and I have a particular interest in pronunciation and expression.   

In each episode, non-native and native speakers will chat about their experiences with English, share their advice and, at the end, I’ll give some pronunciation tips for you to take away and practice.  

So – ready?  Let’s get Chat ENG!

This episode, I’m chatting with Eric.  Eric is from the USA, he’s a Master Lecturer at the University of Southern California – or USC – and he has published books for English learners.  This was my first chat with someone in a different continent, so we were online in very different timezones… lunchtime for Eric, dinnertime for me!

We chatted about American accents, tips for students of different disciplines preparing for Questions and Answers (or “Q & A”s) and long writing projects in English, and how being clear is often more important than being brief, but I started by asking Eric to tell me a little bit about himself…

INTERVIEW

E:  Sure! My name is Eric Roth. I teach graduate students at the University of Southern California and I've been working there for 18 years. My two main classes are Advanced Writing Skills - this is for non-fiction, so academic and professional purposes – and then the Speaking Skills side of that too, where we cover both academic, professional and social communication skills. And…you know…I'm a former journalist, I’ve taught English at community colleges and taught in France and Spain and Vietnam. I enjoy the work quite a bit - I think that our profession is a phenomenal profession from a point of view of having wonderful classroom experiences.

S:  This sounds amazing!  So before we talk about your two classes at university, what about your English, Eric?  If someone was to hear you speak, would they be able to tell where you were from?

E:  I don't think so!  I was born in New York. City, I was raised in the Midwest in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is a great place to test products because it's really the middle of the middle!  And I've been living in Los Angeles for over 30 years. So I…I'm not sure. I doubt it!

S:  And as you, sort of, moved around then, have you noticed that different places - because, I mean, America is so vast - I would imagine that vocabulary changes a lot between, sort of, the East Coast and the West Coast?

E: I think there is more, you know, pre-radio, pre-TV, pre-YouTube, I think there were far more regional differences. Now it's like, you know, a few colourful regional expressions. Yes, you're not going to confuse fast talking Brooklynite for someone from… I don’t know… Mississippi.

S:  So, the students that you have - are they all studying the same topic, or do you have, sort of, a variety of people?

E:  So, one of the pleasures of teaching English, I think, at a university like USC is that we have many different disciplines. So, if we have a class of 15 students, we’ll have 12 different disciplines. Somebody is in Computer Science, somebody's in Architecture, someone's in Biomedical Engineering, someone else's in Performance Studies, and so we do have a chance to learn from each other and so, kind of, a lot of the assignments build on that conceit of you have specialised knowledge, you're a young professional, usually they’re young - 20s and 30s - and then you get a chance to share your evolving knowledge to non-specialists, and so the challenge is to make it clear, you have to overcome that burden of knowledge… that cursive knowledge, if you will. So, you know, let's drop the jargon. Let's provide a little background context. By the way, why does this matter? What do I do with this random piece of knowledge? So it kind of evokes a strong university undergraduate experience, because you're studying the universe through the lenses in many different areas. So the Communications Engineer does look at the world differently than a young journalist, than a Film Studies major, than a Gender Studies major. And that's… that's wonderful!  And then you throw in different first languages - and sometimes even within the same country. So it's smart people from a lot of different places, often very accomplished, and so they have some influence and it's, you know, what they choose to focus on, what they feel comfortable saying and what they feel are taboo topics. And the taboos do exist, and they do range and then how they explain, because we always build in Q & As for all of our presentations, and even on the reading assignments, peer reading, you always write four or five questions for your classmates. So there is this engagement and students will be more direct than perhaps I would be, but I am curious!

S: I love the idea, the Question and Answer (Q&A). I mean, that must be quite an important aspect of it, that ability to ask and probe, and then to answer in a… in a confident way.

E:  Right, and then you want to balance truth and tact. And that's a constant back and forth. And again, we go back to “audience – context – purpose”, and I tell them to prepare for the questions. Prepare, you know, one really great question that you would ask if you were in the audience, one tough question, one silly question that they misunderstood and so you may have to restate the question so that it's a meaningful question. And then one other question from wherever and just kind of anticipate those. 

Another trick I teach them is to do the A-B-C, skip D, and then go to E. And somebody smart in the audience will say “what about D?” and ask that question you didn't… you skipped over or you didn’t…  And then you have the slide already prepared.  So, if you say I really need eight slides, and it's only seven minutes - okay, have the extra slide in your back pocket. And if somebody asks you, you're ready! 

S:  That's a great trick, isn’t it!

E:  That's one of the challenges… is that we have to make sure that their writing fits the discipline, and also, you know, fits the communication environment we're in. And so that's one reason that I like to do things that build common ground, such as restaurant reviews, film reviews, that also allow them to share their experiences and insight in an authentic, positive English language context. And it's a very affirming thing. That their experience… they have something to contribute to the English language environment. I used to do… when I had just a regular writing class, I would have people do a 50 word review, a 300 word review and a 750 word review of the same movie just because of that thing of modifying your writing.  The restaurant review I like because it also accommodates a range of registers and levels of formality. 

S: Gosh! You must have some great top tips then, you know, especially I know students get quite nervous when they have to write a lot. What tips would you give writers when they have to submit a long piece of writing?

E:  Well, step by step … you break a mega project into small mini projects. So the final research paper we do is rather long - it's by far the longest piece of writing they've usually done. In total, it's like 19 to 22 pages, and I don't even want to tell them how long it is when we begin the process, because it's just overwhelming. So there's no advantage to terrifying people!  So we begin with a bio statement, which is a one-page document about yourself. And we begin with what you're doing right now, this moment. Okay, and then I want you to pick a point in the past where you made your first significant decision - and for most of us, that's when we decided to go to college and where we decided to go to college. But that may not be - maybe you won a national / international contest, maybe you won some major award at a young age. I don't want to hear I was born in a small town. First, let's get the facts down and then we can get a little bit of a positive spin. Then I want you to walk me up to the present. So you're in… you're at the university. What do you do at the university? Something happened, I don't know what happened and we're just focused on your academic and professional successes. I'm not interested in the personal, just academic and professional successes. And there were successes. Remember them. Find them. You have to be the hero of the story!  Then we kind of walk us through to the present - what are you doing at USC? Why did you choose USC? Why did you choose this programme? And then when we go on and we give a positive projection into the future. So after graduating with honours in 2024, give us a positive depiction of what would bring a smile to your face. Then we go to the actual research paper itself and it's 7 to 12 pages. And of course there's a works-cited page, and then we need an abstract in front, and throw on a title page, and it’s a nice long paper.

S: So, step by step, projects become mini projects, and you get them the end. Yeah.

E: Works are rewritten several times (Sure.), so you're turning in the summary evaluations as you're creating them, you're getting feedback, and then we're also adding, you know, little…you know, little tweaks to make it more precise. So they're learning as they go through each stage of the process, because we do have this mega project that we want to build in things like, you know, give me a positive trend and then okay, let's do a little nice description of… so what do we see in that map, table, graph, chart?

S:  And with the precision then, with the rewrite, does that mean less jargon, being more concise, better grammar… what does that mean to be more precise do you think? 

E:  Well, it's a great question. I mean, it differs with students and I try to not litter with red marks. So, I usually identify one or two good mistakes, and then we'll work on those one or two for the next time. Okay, so it might be subject-verb agreement, it might be adjective word order, and yeah, sometimes it is word choice - they've chosen a synonym that didn't really work. But it's not always for conciseness, because if you are writing for a non-specialist, you have to provide background. You can't use the acronyms. You need to tell us more of the story, if you will, so that it's not always for conciseness. But yes, we do try to get rid of all the “very”s, reduce the number of “to be” verbs. Do we really need more than three prepositions in a sentence?  I'm sceptical!  And, you know, even if they just read it out loud - while that's not as effective for non-native English speakers as it is for native speakers, it’s still a useful technique and they’ll catch a lot of good mistakes. Sometimes we're actually adding words, so for clarity, because for my purpose is clarity is more important than brevity often. So we'll do like “this + noun” summary sentences, “this + what? “This trend”, “this development”, “this study’ that provides more… it reduces the uncertainty on the readers’ end. So that's often very helpful. 

S:  Absolutely!  We'll have to come back for a part two at some point!  It’d be so interesting to find out… because how we met was on Twitter with Chimayo Press - am I saying that right? (Yes – Chimayo Press). Is that, sort of, educational books that you put out?

E: They’re fluency focused (Okay), and it's time to do a third edition of the original book, which is called “Compelling Conversations”. And then that led to a series - a future co-writer met me at a conference. He was like, “Eric, we have to revise this book. My aunt can't speak English, and she's been in the country for 25 years.” And was like “okay, but that's the only book that didn't make money, so we really have to revise that book!” I’m very glad we did!  

It’s a great example of different audiences - it went from an EFL book for people in Vietnam to an ESL book for immigrants and refugees from Vietnam in America (oh wow!).  So they, you know - different audience, different context, different purpose = different book.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai 

(Music)

So much to talk about!  As we ran out of time, Eric very kindly emailed me his tips for English learners. He says:

“Pursue your curiosity in English and create positive experiences in English. Forget conquering English; swim in English!  What does that translate into?  Whether reading restaurant reviews, watching movies in English, or talking with neighbours in English, dive in and keep moving toward your goal of becoming who you want to be as an English speaker.” 

 
Wise words! 

So, this episode’s pronunciation tip is more of an expressions tip, and linked (well, I think!) to Eric’s advice about asking questions.  Sometimes in English, what you hear as a question after a statement is actually what we call a “Question Tag”.  As an example: “it’s hot today, isn’t it?” = the “isn’t it?” is the question tag, and adds a little emphasis to a statement.  A basic rule for using question tags is: positive statements have negative tags, and negative statements have positive tags, so “it’s hot today, isn’t it?” changes to “it isn’t hot today, is it?”.

Now, the great thing about English is that how I say the Question Tag can show whether I think the listener will agree with me or not, or whether I know the answer to my statement + question tag.  Basically – am I sure or not sure?   If my voice goes down, I’m sure.  If my voice goes up, I’m not sure.  Here are 3 pairs of examples to illustrate the down and up of the voice:

First:  You see a bag.  You think it belongs to your friend.

Try these sentences:

“This is your bag, isn’t it?” Voice down = sure.

“This is your bag, isn’t it?” Voice up = not sure.

Next:  You are waiting to hear about your report. You think you will hear something tomorrow.

Try these sentences:

 “We’ll hear tomorrow, won’t we?” Voice down = sure.

“We’ll hear tomorrow, won’t we?” Voice up = not sure.

Finally: You see some biscuits / cookies on the table – they smell really good!  Are you sure you can take one? It’s always good to check!

Try these sentences:

“I can’t take one, can I?” Voice down = sure. No biscuit or cookie for you!

“I can’t take one, can I?” Voice up = not sure…and maybe you can take one!

So, to recap:  Question Tags add emphasis, and the way we say them shows whether we are sure of the answer or not, or whether we think the listener will agree or not. 

Over to you to practice!

So there we are!  The transcript of this episode is available to read on the podcast’s webpage, so take a look!    Join me next time for more pronunciation and grammar tips, more advice and, most importantly, more chatting!   My thanks to Eric, and, for her music, a huge thanks to the wonderful Mara Carlyle.   Bye for now!